Saturday, June 13, 2015

ARC Review: Witness to Passion by Naima Simone

This is my first book by this author and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Witness to Passion is Shane and Fallon's story and it is one HAWT story.

Fallon is the best friend of Shane's younger sister who has wanted Shane for as long as she can remember. Shane is the stoic army veteran who lost one of his best friends during the war and is haunted by the predictable demons that accompany that sort of tragedy. Add to that the fact that Shane's perception of Fallon is skewed by his own experiences and there was a fair amount of angst in the story. Shane thinks Fallon is flighty and unpredictable and Fallon knows he sees her that way. Fallon thinks Shane isn't interested in her and won't change his mind about her personaliy. Of course Shane and Fallon are both wrong.

Shane owns a private security company and Fallon finds herself in desperate need of security after witnessing a murder.

What I really like about this book is the layering of the characters. Neither is as straightforward as they might seem at first glance. Fallon is kind of impulsive and talkative but it turns out she's also strong, fiercely independent and has endured more than most women. Shane is closed off but he's also fiercely protective as the result of having a childhood of being left unprotected. As Shane and Fallon slowly reveal themselves to one another we get to know them as well in a very natural way.

I felt as drawn to the characters in this book as they felt towards one another. Their feelings for each other and their reactions to the tragedies in their own lives come across as genuine and compelling. Although Shane tries to deny his physical attraction to Fallon, he was pretty ineffective. When the barrier finally breaks down, it BREAKS down to the tune of hair pulling, dirty talking delicious goodness. This was some seriously hot sex and I loved every minute of it. Of course the sex was supposed to be "no strings attached" meaning gigantic ropes immediately attached to the whole situation.

The only thing I did not like about this book is the amount of introspection. Character introspection has become one of my pet peeves, especially the way it was done in this book. There were just too many pages of redundant internal character dialogue. The result of that is always the same...skimming pages. I can forgive an author for torturing us with introspection when the plot is fast paced, the characters are well developed, the romance is sweet and the sex is HOT. So all in all, I definitely recommend this book and I know for a fact I will be back for more from this author.